Gangs

So, a rap blogger recently went and posted a few amazing youtube clips in a series called "Goons Of The Industry" regarding people with music industry connections as well as criminal ties.

Essential watching just for the absurdly amazing score. First off, shout out a video on youtube that both references one of my childhood hometown's greatest moments of tragicomedy: Two gangs actually having a shoot-out in the middle of seeing Godfather III and realizing their foes are right there. Also one of my best friend's older cousins makes a cameo in one of these photos which was very jarring.

Anyway, there's a similar thread not too far off in subject matter from here, but I ended up musing all weekend on the function of a 'gang' in the criminal capacity (as opposed to the idea of a gang just being a 'band' of friends) and that whole culture. I've openly rambled about how in American Gang culture Mafioso rituals which are holdovers from ancient Papal Knight rituals (where you can find a lineage from the Knights of Malta to the classic Sicilian Mafia) end up somehow arriving into Black Gang Culture. Naturally, those rituals as well as the symbology should never ever get in the hands of a group who are by circumstance utterly isolated from what is an ethnocentric criminal organization, but so much of it does.

I know everyone loves to play in the whole ramble of "OH CAPITALISM THE ENNOBLED ROBBER" and blah blah blah, but I think sometimes we don't think about the social functions of gangs that are bridged around identity. There is a ethnocentric or occupational organization, as basically your larger gangs are essentially 'thieves guilds' to a certain extent. There's the sense of family which is of course psychoanalyzed to death but has historical applications in family communities who occasionally resort to violence in history but never are seen as Gangs or Criminal Organizations even if they commit crimes, until... Perhaps the modern age?

No real proper questions to bring up besides some curiousity how it works in Most Of The Board's home nation, as they do films about the likes of the Krays or Yardies, but naturally it must occur to this day on more continuous extents (Giggs whole ties to the PYG's being an obvious indicator).